CentOS-7 1609 Rolling ISOs Now Live

Rolling ISOs

The CentOS Linux team produces rolling CentOS-7 isos, normally on a monthly basis.

The most recently completed version of those ISOs are version 1609 (16 is for 2016, 09 is for September).

The team usually creates all our ISO and cloud images based on all updates through the 28th of the month in question .. so 1609 would mean these ISOs will contain all updates for CentOS-7 through September 28th, 2016.

These rolling ISOs have the same installer as the most recent CentOS-7 point release (currently 7.2.1511) so that they install on the same hardware as our original ISOs, while the packages installed are the latest updates.

This means that the actual kernel that boots up on the ISO is the 7.2.1511 default kernel (kernel-3.10.0-327.el7.x86_64.rpm), but that the kernel installed is the latest kernel package (kernel-3.10.0-327.36.1.el7.x86_64.rpm for the 1609 ISOs).

These normal Rolling ISOs can be downloaded from this LINK and here are the sha256sums:
CentOS-7-x86_64-DVD-1609-01.iso:
3948f7a31a8693b2df90dc31252551dcd5aa9d13f4910ad9ce28fcddc247d84f 

CentOS-7-x86_64-Everything-1609-01.iso:
602383c2aa93f6d7df46bd47658dcbf9b9d567108dec56ba60ce46a2f51c6eb2 

CentOS-7-x86_64-LiveGNOME-1609-01.iso:
f6ee8af6814bc58e2c8424db862a443649f3a57b5f85caf63704ab52d5bbac68 

CentOS-7-x86_64-LiveKDE-1609-01.iso:
1349c70e815d46c49d6ea459de6fbc074f5131c803343db18d32987ee78fd303 

CentOS-7-x86_64-Minimal-1609-01.iso:
54721e5e444a3191b18b0fabe1c35e12b65f93aa31732beb7899212d19cab69b 

You can verify the sha256sum of your downloaded ISO following these instructions prior to install.

The DVD ISO contains everything needed to do an install, but still fits on one 4.3 GB DVD.  This is the most versatile install that will fit on a single DVD and if you are new to CentOS this likely the installer you want.  If you pick Minimum Install in this installer, you can do an install that is identical to Minimal ISO.  You can also install many different Workstation and Server installs from this ISO, including both GNOME and KDE.

The Everything ISO has all packages, even those not used by the installer.  You usually do not need this ISO unless you do not have access to the internet and want to install things later from this DVD and not included by the graphical installer.  Most users will not need this ISO, it is > 7 GB but can do installs from a USB key that is big enough to hold it (currently an 8 GB key).

The LiveGNOME ISO is a Basic GNOME Workstation install, but there is no modification or personalization allowed during the install.  It is a much easier install to do, but any extras packages must be installed from the internet later.

The LiveKDE ISO is Basic KDE Workstation install.  It also does not allow modification or personalization until after the install has finished.

The Minimal ISO is a very small and quick install that boots to the command console and has network connectivity and a firewall.  It is used by System Administrators for the minimal install that they can then add functionality to.  You need to know what you are doing to use this ISO.

Newer Hardware Support

As explained above, the normal rolling ISOs boot from the Point Release installer.  Sometimes there is newer hardware that might not be supported in the point release installer, but could be supported with a newer kernel.  This installer is much less tested and is only recommended if you can not get one of the normal installers to work for you.

There are only 2 ISOs in this family, here are the links and sha256sums:

CentOS-7-x86_64-DVD-1609-99.iso:
90c7148ddccbb278d45d06805dee6599ec1acc585cafd02d56c6b8e32a238fa9 

CentOS-7-x86_64-Minimal-1609-99.iso:
1cfbbc73cc7a0eb17d7fe2fa5b1adf07492e340540603e8e1fd28b52e95f02e3

You can verify the ISO's sha256 sum using this LINK, and the descriptions above are the same for these two ISOs.

CentOS at cPanel 2016

The CentOS team will have a booth at the cPanel 2016 WEIRED Conference in Portland, Oregon at the Hilton Portland & Executive Tower on October 3rd through the 5th 2016.

I (Johnny Hughes) will be there to discuss all things CentOS and we may have some guests at the booth from some of our Special Interest Groups and others from the CentOS Community.

If you are planning to be at the conference, please stop by and see us.

CentOS at 2016 Texas Linux Fest

We will have a CentOS Booth at the 2016 Texas Linux Fest on July 8th and 9th in the Austin Texas Convention Center.

Please stop by the CentOS booth for some Swag and discussion.

We will also have several operational CentOS-7 Arm32 devices at the booth, including a Raspberry Pi2, Raspberry Pi3, CubieTruck (Cubieboard3) and CubieTruck Plus (Cubieboard5).  These devices are showcasing our AltArch Special Interest Group, which produce ppc64, ppc64le, armhfp (Arm32), aarch64 Arm64), and i686 (x86 32) architectures of CentOS-7.

We also will be glad to discuss the new things happening within the project, including a number of operational Special Interest Groups (SIGs) that are producing add on software for CentOS including The Xen Hypervisor, OpenStack (via RDO), Storage (GlusterFS and Ceph), Software Collections, Cloud Images (AWS, Azure, Oracle, Vagrant Boxes, KVM), Containers (Docker and Project Atomic).

So, if you have been using CentOS for the past 12 years, all that is happening just like it always has (long lived standard Linux distro with LTS), as well as all the new hypervisor, container and cloud capabilities.

Firefox 38 and TLS less than 1.2

Red Hat released the source code for Firefox 38.  We have (or willbe
today) releasing this for CentOS-5, CentOS-6, and CentOS-7.

It does not, by default, connect to https sites with TLS less than 1.2. 
This means it will not connect to sites on CentOS-5, for example ..
there are many others.

In any event, here is a wiki article that explains potential issues and
workarounds:

http://wiki.centos.org/TipsAndTricks/Firefox38onCentOS

CentOS Dojo at LISA14 in Seattle on November 10th, 2014

Join us at the all day (09:00 to 17:00) CentOS Dojo on Monday, November 10th, 2014 at the LISA14 conference in Seattle, Washington.

There will be at least three CentOS board members there (Johnny Hughes, Jim Perrin, and Karsten Wade).

The current topics include:

• CI environment scaling by Dave Nalley
• DevOps Isn’t Just for WebOps: The Guerrilla’s Guide to Cultural Change by Michael Stahnke
• The EPEL Phoenix Saga by Stephen Smoogen
• Docker in the Distro by Jim Perrin
• Managing your users by Matt Simmons

Visit the CentOS Wiki for more information.

CentOS-6.6 is Released

CentOS 6.6 is now released, see the Announcement.

So, the Continuous Release RPMs where released on 21 October (7 days after RHEL 6.6) and the Full Release was done 28 October (14 days after RHEL 6.6).

Enjoy.

Continuous Release Repository RPMs for CentOS-6.6 Released

The CentOS team has released the Continuous Release (CR) Repository RPMs for CentOS-6.6 into their 6.5/cr tree.  See the Release Announcement.

Now a little more about the release process.

1. Red Hat releases a version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux.  In this case the version is Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.6 (RHEL-6.6), which was released on October 14th, 2014.  With that release by Red Hat comes the source code which RHEL 6.6 is based on.
2. The CentOS team takes that released source code and starts building it for their CentOS release (in this case CentOS-6.6).  This process can not start until the Source Code from Red Hat is available, which in this case was October 14th.
3. At some point, all the Source Code has been built and there are RPMs available, this is normally 1-5 days depending on how many Source RPMs there are to build and how many times the order needs to be changed to get the builds done correctly.
4. After the CentOS team thinks they have a good set of binary RPMs built, they submit them to the QA team (a team of volunteers who do QA for the releases).  This QA process includes the t_functional suite and several knowledgeable system administrators downloading and running tests on the RPMs to validate updating with them works as planned.
5. At this point there are tested RPMs ready, and the CentOS team needs to build an installer tree. This means, take the new RPMs and move them into place in the main tree, remove the older ones RPMs they are replacing, run the build installer to create an installable tree, test that installable tree.  This process can take up to 7 days.
6. Once there is an installable tree, all the ISOs have to be created and tested.  We have to create the ISOs, upload them to the QA process, test them for installs via ISOs (correct sizes, how to split the ISOs, what is on the Live CDs and LiveDVDs to keep them below the max size to fit on media, etc.).  We then also test the installs for UEFI installs, Secure Boot installs (CentOS-7 only), coping to USB Keys and checking the installs that way, etc.  This process can also take up to 7 days.

So, in the process above, we can have vetted binary RPMs ready to go as soon as 5 days after we start, but it may be 14 or more days after that before we have a complete set of ISOs to do a full release.  Thus the reason for the CR Repository.

The CR Repository

The process of building and testing an install tree, then creating and testing several types of ISO sets from that install tree (DVD Installer, Minimum Install ISO, LiveCD, LiveDVD, etc) can take 1-2 weeks after all the RPMs are built and have gone through initial QA testing.

The purpose of the CR repository is to provide quicker access to RPMs for an upcoming CentOS point release while further QA testing is ongoing and the ISO installers are being built and tested.

Updates in the CR for CentOS-6.6

More Information about CR.

CentOS-6.6 Release Notes (Still in progress until the actual CentOS-6.6 release).

Upstream RHEL-6.6 Release Notes and Technical Notes.